A personal exploration of Wiccan spirituality

Day 184: Water, the Power to Accept

As we know from yesterday’s work, water uncontained is a force to be reckoned with. It will mow you down, and it don’t care. It dares. Yet, once water is contained, it will happily remain in its container until something happens to that container. In fact, it fits itself exactly to the shape of that container unquestioned. It just takes the container as it is.

That’s the flipside to the power to dare: the power to accept. The converse to breaking boundaries is honoring them. As Roderick says, the practical terms of acceptance are “grounding yourself in the circumstances of your body, your environment, family friends, work, life, etc. It is fully knowing where you are right now and determining where you’d like to go.”

Part of that knowing is accepting the real limits of a situation, the whole truth of your life no matter how pleasant or unpleasant aspects of it may be. Once you accept these limits, you’ll be able to recognize when your cup tilts a bit and allows you to flow in a new way. Understanding the limits means understanding when they change and how to take advantage of that change. This will keep you from clinging to former limits and becoming “paralyzed and ineffective” when your confining variables shift.

However, Roderick is careful to elaborate on paralysis, noting that an imbalance in acceptance causes individuals “to appear rigid, hyper-alert, self-deprecating, demanding of boundaries, needy of high structure and order, or only able to relate to what can be defined.” He also asks us to investigate our own relationship to acceptance by answering the following questions:

In what ways do you feel you are connected to the power to accept?

In what ways do you feel disconnected from the power to accept?

What are the dangers of accepting?

Would accepting have any benefits in your life?

As I’ve previously said, I really like the structure of containment: having those places for everything and putting things in their places. I think I get ‘accepting’ very, very well. Indeed, I’m sort of famous in my family for listening to the dreams of my brothers and then saying “well, that sounds great…but where are you going to get the money/how are you going to find the time/etc.” I make sure that the limits are known before anyone gets over their heads in untenable projects. I don’t really have a strong disconnection from this aspect of water at all.

That being said, I know I’m in the danger zone. As I noted in the previous post, I’m too prone to accepting my situation and leaving change for later times. And I miss out on a lot because of that. Maybe I could be happier if I dared a little more?

Practice: Rebalancing Accepting

Engage in this magical activity whenever you notice that you are feeling rigid, hyper-alert, or self-deprecating. Go to water in a natural setting, such as at a lake, a stream, or the ocean. If you do not live near a natural source of water, fill a large pot or cauldron with fresh clear water. Stand directly in front of the water. Open your arms and welcome this energy into your being. Close your eyes. Imagine that you become transparent and you allow the cool, slow, watery flow to pass directly through you. Stay with this exercise for at least ten minutes.

I anticipate well, it seems.

For this, I would certainly do my best to go to natural water and actually get into it. I keep remembering last Christmas when I went skinny dipping in that waterfall and felt the power of the water around me. I don’t think you could really get that DARE infusion if you stood in front of a sedate contained cauldron.

By the way, this is my tricentennial posting! I don’t think I’ve ever had a journaling project that has resulted in this much body. Congratulations to me!

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About the Project

I'm Melissa Zupan. This blog began in 2008 as a record of my attempt to work through Timothy Roderick's book, "Wicca: A Year and a Day." Since then I joined up with a merry coven of Gardnerian witches and became an initiate in 2013.
The blog is now a fuller record of my life and work in Wicca. Right now, there's no main theme. I just write what I want to write.

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